IN-PERSON MADRID FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY. SECTION B

Abstract

Ethics is a principal element of philosophy that deals with questions about what one ought to do and how one ought to live. In contemporary times, ethics taught in schools is more concerned with normative theories that are abstract and intellectual, offering itself as a guide for correcting practical decisions and actions rather than a way of living. And in response to specific ethical concerns in certain fields, practical or applied ethics take an interdisciplinary approach such as bioethics, military ethics, and more recently, the ethics of AI. This presentation discusses the approach of the ethics workpackage in the Singapore-French interdisciplinary research collaboration ‘Decision-making in Critical Urban System’ (‘DesCartes’ in short). It outlines the design of the DesCartes programme and the focus of the ethics workpackage, and discusses the challenges of interdisciplinarity and the integration of ethics in a STEM-dominant project. It concludes by showing how it draws ethical considerations about smart city to guide DesCartes STEM researchers by returning to the primary ethical concerns of how one ought to live through ethics awareness workshops.